Sunday, June 29, 2008

As I mentioned yesterday, the weather has been rather active this year. We avoided any storms today but instead have been treated to a cold front moving through, bringing with it some very high winds. The temperature and humidity are finally comfortable but it's hard to fly a small plane when the winds are 18 knots gusting to 26. Luckly I was about due for some ground work with Joe anyway, so we took some time this afternoon to sit down and do just that.

You might recall that I went through ground school last fall - I wrote about it a few posts ago on here. That classroom work covered a great deal of what I need to know for the knowledge test but there are other things to discuss on the ground as well. Today we went through my Pre-Solo Written Test and a Pre-Solo test for the plane I will be flying the most, the Champ. These are not standardized tests from the FAA - but it is required you pass them before soloing - and they consist of a couple pages with questions over the critical regulations, procedures, and operations you need to be familiar with before going up on your own.

I brought my camera along today so I could snap a few photos of the airport and the planes. Take a look below and hopefully you will get a slightly better feel for where I am learning to fly.

Yeah, it was windyCessna 150 sitting next to the fuel areaPiper Cub (65 hp) in the hangarCub up close - I flew this plane in Lessons 4 and 5Runway - the yellow cones mark the left edge

Before I go, here's a cool and very useful fact that Joe taught me today. For most small single-engine airplanes (basically anything I'll be flying) the fuel consumption is 6 gallons per hour per 100 hp. You can use this ratio to figure out your gallons per hour quickly for any plane. So the Cub or Champ (their 65 hp engines can round to 66/100, or 2/3) use about 4 gallons per hour. Simple, yet highly useful!

Saturday, June 28, 2008

The weather gods must have been on my side today because I got to fly in smooth, mostly clear skies at 7 pm. We have been getting rocked by severe thunderstorms for pretty much the entire month and today was no different, but the last line pushed through around 5 or 6 this evening. Power was actually out when I arrived at the airport and they said that 55 knot gusts (that's 63 mph) had recently come rolling through with some wicked lightning.

I found out where the backup fuel drain is on the Cub during preflight, and it's basically a hose that drips the Avgas down underneath the cowling. We got her started and I taxied over to the end of the runway, went through my CIGAR checklist, and then Joe took off and gave me the controls as soon as we were off the ground. After going around the pattern and departing to the East, I climbed up to 3,500 and we practiced Forward Slips. If you recall, I tried them for the first time with Dave during Lesson #3 but I was having trouble up there this time. Seems my brain wasn't connected to what my hands were doing for a while but I got that straightened out and started to get a better feel for how much aileron/bank and rudder to use to keep the airplane headed in the desired direction.

Two rounds of slip practice complete, I flew us back to Stewart and into the traffic pattern. From here, we made three circuits - so four total landings and three takeoffs. This was the first time that I really took off on my own, although Joe had to pull the power back once or twice on me to get things straightened out. He was talking about applying power as you turn onto the runway and I think that I was focusing on applying power when I should have focused more on turning onto the runway. Once I corrected that thought process, I actually managed to make two half-decent takeoffs. The plane still wanted to veer to the left more than the right (partly due to some physics phenomena that I'll discuss another time) and I am only beginning to get a feel for how much rudder you need to use to keep the plane pointed down the runway as you pick up speed. It is just one of the many things with learning to fly where plenty of practice will eventually make perfect.

Tomorrow I get to experience spins for the first time, which could be interesting. Me and carnival rides aren't best friends so when Joe told me to think of a spin as being on the teacup ride spinning around but also dropping out of the sky, let's just say it didn't make me all giddy inside. But I'm not worried and so far have enjoyed pulling G's in steep turns and bouncing around the sky much more than I would have expected. Either way, I'm won't be eating three eggs, hash browns, and an extra large order of bacon for breakfast in the morning.

One final note tonight - I'm announcing a new feature on the blog. I recently purchased a great little device (AMOD AGL3080 GPS Logger) that continuously records your GPS coordinates including position, altitude, and speed. While it is designed for storing locations where you take photos - called Geotagging - I also bought it to record my movements up in the sky.

So now in addition to reading about my lessons, you can open up the tracking file in Google Earth(it's a free download - click here) and view my flight in 3-D! At the bottom of every lesson above the flight time there will be a link to that flight's KML/KMZ file. Neat, huh? I forgot to turn it on before takeoff tonight, so it starts in the middle of practicing slips - oops.

Sunday, June 22, 2008

Today was one of those days where you get back on the ground feeling slightly unsure of yourself. While it was essentially my first time doing takeoffs and landings on my own (technically not accurate, since Joe helped plenty on the controls) and you can't expect to be perfect right away, I didn't feel like I was doing the greatest job of controlling the aircraft. Maybe some of it was the fact that the window was open on the Cub and it was a little hard to hear Joe sometimes, but I don't think that's really it.

The weather was interesting, with thunderstorms popping up a few miles north and west of the field in the warm afternoon air and moving to the northeast. Certainly you have to respect storms as a pilot and Joe felt these were plenty tame - and we were a good distance away from them. To be honest I could not believe how little I would have noticed them if you couldn't see the rain falling to the ground (a very cool site from the air) and lightning off in the distance. Other than a few good bumps - at one point, the wind suddenly shifted 90 degrees and gusted pretty strong and spun the nose to the side - and feeling the air shift around, it was really quite smooth up there.

Unlike other lessons up to this point where I have worked on multiple maneuvers, this time we just took off, flew around the pattern, landed, taxied back, and repeated for a total of seven landings on the day. Joe flew the first time around and then handed the controls over to me for the rest of the afternoon. On the ground while taxing, I worked on remembering how to correctly position the controls ("climb into the wind" and "dive away from the wind" is how to remember it) to help prevent the wind from getting underneath a wing where it could flip us over. For me, the Cub was a little harder to move around on the ground than the Champ and while you don't use them much it was pretty difficult for me to get a good feel and push firmly on the brake pedals.

Rudder usage was probably my biggest deficiency today, as I was having trouble correcting properly on the takeoff roll and landing rollout to keep the nose pointed down the runway. At the beginning I was not flying coordinated very well with the rudder either. As the lesson went on I improved, but it's quite clear that I have a lot of work to do. It also felt a little different in the stick on takeoff compared to the Champ, like you don't have to push forward nearly as much to bring the tail off the ground. I was not letting the plane fly off the ground on its own very well, and we bounced around on the turf on every takeoff for a couple seconds until I got the nose up enough for us to climb away. On landing, I need to work on bringing the stick ALL the way back when we're a few feet off the ground to bleed off the airspeed so the plane plants itself on the ground and stays there with a proper three point landing. When it comes to feeling unsure, I just did not feel like I was able to apply what Joe was telling me after each trip around the pattern and adjust my inputs to improve the next time around. Not a bad day and it was definitely a good experience to get up in some less than ideal weather to be tossed around a little bit, but I made it clear to myself that there are plenty of things to work on next time out.

Friday, June 20, 2008

You can't ask for a much better way to end the work week than with a flight on a beautiful clear evening. I went up for about an hour tonight with Dave, who I had been scheduled to fly with a month ago before some weather-related cancellations. Due to my work schedule (having to mainly fly in the evenings and on weekends) and the availability of instructors and planes, I will likely be training with both Dave and Joe now as I work towards my certificate... which will help me stick to my goal of getting up at least once or twice a week. Tonight I arrived a little early and went out to preflight the plane. Dave spoke to me in some additional detail about the fuel capacity of the Champ, since the gauge was only reading about 1/4 full. Even when it reads empty there are close to 7 gallons left in the tank, so we had plenty for an hour up in the air around the airport.

Once she was started, I did the CIGAR check before we taxied to the runway. Unlike last time, I remembered all the steps and felt more comfortable running through the list. One thing I still have to work on is remembering to "make a box" with the control stick when checking the control surfaces. I then taxied over towards the runway and did a 360-degree turn to check for traffic in the pattern. I can definitely feel myself improving when it comes to controlling the plane on the ground, to the point that it's starting to seem slightly natural. Dave had me follow through on the controls (meaning I place my hands and feet on the stick and pedals, respectively, to feel his inputs without applying any pressure myself) on takeoff. It's important in taildraggers to first hold the stick all the way back when you advance the throttle but to then move it all the way forward once you start moving to raise the tail off the ground, and then slowly bring it back to neutral. Once you have enough speed, the plane will take to the air on its own. On climb out, Dave pointed out some silos up ahead that are perfect reference points - if you stay aimed at them you follow the runway centerline away from the airport on climb-out as you are supposed to. Very handy tip!

This would be a good time to explain a traffic pattern (the diagram below is from Wikipedia) like I said I would a couple of blog posts ago. Basically, it exists to ensure that airplanes arriving and departing from an airport stay in a logical path and away from each other. The most common pattern is called left traffic since planes make left turns from one leg to the next. Right hand patterns do exist, but I'm going to be talking about a left pattern here since it's what we have at my airport. When you take off and head straight out from the runway, that turns into what is called the Upwind leg since airplanes generally take off into the wind. Crosswind is when you make the first 90 degree left turn and are perpendicular to the runway. You then make another 90 degree left to turn Downwind - on this leg, you usually reduce the throttle and start your descent when you are abeam (across from) the end of the runway headed in the opposite direction from which you just took off. Base is the next leg, when you continue descending and making preparations to land. Final is when you are lined up with the runway and making a final descent that will bring you back down on to the runway to land. The traffic pattern altitude is generally 1,000 feet above the ground level except in some special cases.

Back to the flight, after takeoff I turned Crosswind and Downwind, pausing the climb at pattern altitude (1,800 feet) until we were abeam the end of the runway, then resumed the climb up to 3,000 feet. We paused since you should be at pattern altitude whenever you are actually in the pattern. Dave had me perform some basic 90 degree and 180 degree turns and then we moved on to new things. While I had seen these next three maneuvers demonstrated by Joe on my last lesson, today was the first time I tried Steep Turns, Dutch Rolls, and Forward Slips on my own.

You definitely feel some G forces when you do steep turns, and I noticed a tendency to bank further when I went to the right because I felt more Gs going in that direction. Talking after the lesson, we discussed how it's harder (or more awkward) to hold the same amount of control pressure in a right bank due to the position of the stick in your right hand. Think of arm wrestling - it's way easier to go to the left (if you're right handed) isn't it? In flight, the wings produce tiny vortices at the wingtips and if you do a proper Steep Turn while holding altitude you will feel a slight bump when you complete a 360 degree turn as you fly back through those vortices. I actually did this on my turns and it was very cool to actually experience it up there, especially my first time with the maneuver.

Dutch Rolls were interesting and one of the keys I learned from Dave was to lead with your rudder (before you bank with the aileron) and let the plane carry itself through the roll. Slips are a but counter-intuitive since I have spent the better part of three lessons trying to always fly coordinated and now I had to intentionally apply aileron one direction with opposite rudder. I actually ended up in a right slip (nose points to the left) when I had meant to go into a left slip, but you increase drag and lose altitude the same no matter which direction you're pointed. All told, Dave said that I did a good job for my first time with the maneuvers and I am really beginning to feel more comfortable up there.

Instead of heading back to the airport and calling it a day, we did some work in the traffic pattern. I flew the plane back towards the airport and into the Upwind leg - approaching as we did, you fly parallel to and about a quarter mile to the right of the runway. From there, it's a standard turn to Crosswind and then to Downwind. Once abeam the numbers you add Carburetor Heat, pull back the throttle until the engine is at 1,500 RPMs, and trim the elevator so that you are descending at 60 mph. This descent continues through Base and then Final as you line up with the runway. I was a little high so I got to enter a Forward Slip to lose altitude and then brought it back out and aligned the plane with the runway a few feet off the ground. The goal is to do a "three point landing" where the two main wheels and tailwheel impact the runway at the same time - I don't know for sure if we did this, but the landing was pretty smooth. I then taxied back down alongside the runway, took off, flew another complete pattern, and landed back at Stewart.

What do I think was my biggest improvement this time out? Taxiing, hands down. I felt like I was really in control and was able to keep the aircraft pointed right where I wanted on the ground, even during rollout on the runway after landing. After the first landing, the taxi back for takeoff felt quite good and it was even better after we came back down for good. The plane needed more fuel, so I got to see how to properly use the fuel pump and add some good ol' 100LL to the gas tank for the first time. Dave and I stuck around the airport for a while talking about the flight and some other maneuvers and then I helped get some of the planes into the hangar for the evening. Right before I left, we put the Champ away and I got to taxi it back across the field and really felt good with my feet on the pedals. So aside from the in-flight progress, I definitely feel like I have made a solid step forward when it comes to getting around on the ground!

Thursday, June 19, 2008

It always amazes me when I hear about all the different things Kodak is involved in, from the continuous inkjet (CIJ) printers I work on here in Ohio to anti-counterfitting technology in wine labels. I really am proud to work for such a well-known and respected company and enjoy the opportunities I have to work on different projects with people from all over the world. Facts like how 80% of instant lottery tickets in the world are printed with our CIJ systems remind me of the importance and impact of what I work on every day.

This morning I came across a new section on our website about many of our neat inventions and thought it was so well designed and interesting that I wanted to share it with you. Enjoy!

Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Last fall, we had a silent auction at work and one of the items up for bid was a plane ride for two and dinner. You can probably guess that I didn't exactly allow myself to lose. A former president of the company happens to be a pilot (as is his wife) and they own a Cessna 182 RG with another partner. It took a few months of figuring out schedules and working around the weather but we finally managed to get up in the air on June 8th. Dinner also turned into breakfast, which was probably a good idea on a day that temperatures would end up with reaching into the 90s. So my girlfriend (who took all the photos posted here) and I set out early that Sunday morning to Dayton-Wright Brothers Airport (MGY) to head off on a cross-country flight to Muncie, Indiana.

While humid and warm, the weather was generally pretty good. We had an IFR clearance (that's Instrument Flight Rules for the non-pilots reading this, which allows you to fly in the clouds) over to Muncie (MIE) and that turned out to be helpful since we flew right through some clouds at 6,000 feet on our way over. Nothing like a little moisture to clean all the bugs off the plane. Otherwise it was an uneventful 35-minute or so flight and we were the only aircraft in the pattern when the tower cleared us to land. The restaurant in Muncie is pretty well regarded by pilots so that's one of the reasons we headed over from Dayton that morning. All the food was quite tasty and we relaxed while eating and saw quite a few other planes land out in front of the restaurant with hungry passengers.

Flying over Interstate 70Taking off from Muncie

A quick taxi from the restaurant to the runway and we took off, this time VFR (meaning Visual Flight Rules, or stay away from the clouds) on the trip back to Dayton. It was getting a little bumpier with the heat rising off the ground in the late morning, but nothing too out of the ordinary. Instead of going direct, we took the RNAV approach (a way to use GPS satellites to navigate your way to an airport) to Runway 20 at MGY. A side benefit is that this approach takes you right over top of downtown Dayton so we got a great view of the city and surrounding area. You could even see (the photo's below) my office and apartment quite nicely.

Final approach to Runway 20

Back on the ground at the hangar, we chatted for a few minutes before heading on our way. Any time in the air is a good time for me 99.9% of the time, and this was no exception. It was a lot of fun to go up with my girlfriend since a ride is the only way we can go up in a small plane together for the time being. I think it was also a good experience to talk and fly with a pilot who has been flying for over 40 years. As a beginning student, I don't deal with IFR or RNAV approaches - that's a loooong ways off right now - and it was great to have a chance to see them in flight. We also got to enjoy one of the great benefits of general aviation by flying somewhere that would have been nearly two hours by car in about a half hour. As far as I'm concerned, there really is no better way to spend a Sunday morning.

Monday, June 16, 2008

Just a quick update to let you know I have a new blog up on the Kodak site about the "work portion" of my trip to Germany:

"For those of us in the Graphic Communications Group at Kodak, the quadrennial trade show known as drupa might best be described as our Olympics. If you have not seen it in person I do not know that any words can truly do justice to the sheer size of the event. Close to half a million people from over one hundred countries attend the show in Düsseldorf, Germany to see the latest in printing technology. From giant offset printing presses to prepress and production software packages to Kodak's latest digital inkjet printing technologies, if it's printing related it's probably on display at drupa..."

Monday, June 9, 2008

Plane: ChampInstructor: JoeRoute: 40I, LocalWeather: Few clouds, 75-85 degrees, wind 210 degrees at 7-10 knotsMy job took me away to Germany for two weeks to attend drupa, a giant trade show for the printing industry, and then I spent a few vacation days over there before flying back across the pond. It was on my schedule for a long time and one of the reasons I did not start flying regularly any sooner. But now that it’s over and done with (Germany is a great country, by the way) I am ready to get into the training groove. Similar to my first lesson, this one was preceded by a cancellation on Friday the 6th due to high winds. We've had quite the stormy spring here in Ohio and the weather has not exactly been ideal for flying as much as I would like. I was supposed to go up with a different instructor on that flight but today I was with Joe again.

I did the preflight inspection of the plane, which I had not done before, while we discussed some of the key things to watch out for. There are springs attached to the tailwheel that can break or come loose and that is one thing to pay special attention to. I opened up the cowling to check the oil - and got some grease on myself, which I discovered WD-40 and Dawn dish soap take out like magic - and it had three to four quarts as it should. Then I strained a fuel sample to check for any water in the tank and there were no signs of any contamination. All aviation fuels are colored to help you ensure the correct fuel is in your plane - the 100 octane used in most small planes is a light blue. The fuel gauge (it's basically a wire that sticks out of the cap and bobs up and down) was then checked for proper movement - you certainly don't want it stuck in the "full" position. Joe then pointed out the three most important things in the preflight inspection to me...

Control surfaces - they must be able to move freely, you don't want anything that impedes their movement that can cause them to stick

Engine - checking the oil, fuel, and under the cowling for any foreign objects like bird nests

Even though it was only my second lesson, Joe told me that I seem to be a quick learner and know what I'm doing so he had me get in and buckle up to be at the controls while he would hand prop the engine. I first got in and familiarized myself with the location of the instruments and controls, which are slightly different than the Cub. Probably the biggest difference with the Champ vs. the Cub is that the pilot sits in the front. I found there to be a lot more leg room and it just felt more spacious to me. Ready to start the engine, I first pull the stick all the way back so that the air hitting the tail will force it on to the ground and push on the breaks, then call out "stick back, brakes set, throttle closed, switch off." The person propping the plane then pushes on the plane to make sure the breaks are set and says when they are ready. Whoever's propping the plane is in charge at this point. Once ready, I advance the throttle slightly and turn the key to both (meaning all magnetos are on) and yell out "breaks set, throttle cracked, contact!" A quick and light push on the prop and the engine roared to life, I brought the throttle back to idle, and Joe climbed in back.

Now it was time for taxiing, my favorite activity! Ok, clearly that's sarcasm but I don't actually mind it at all - it's just going to take lots of practice. You reeeeally have to push the pedals in all the way to get it to turn on the ground. We (and by we, I mean I) got turned around pretty quick when I first went to taxi. Turns out the tailwheel was turned completely sideways before we ever moved. Note to self - check that from now on during the preflight and straighten it out. We practiced the before-takeoff runup checklist, known as the CIGAR checklist. C for controls free, I for checking the instruments, G for gas, A for airframe like seatbelts and door latches, and R for runup when you rev up the engine and check the magnetos. Even though I read it all in the book, I only managed to remember the R this time around. Something else for me to work on for next time. Joe then took off, but handed me the controls very shortly after takeoff and had me climb straight out up to 3,000 feet.

You could really feel the wind shifting as we climbed, to the point that it was clearly moving me in different directions at different altitudes. I was not making any attempts to crab into the wind or maintain a straight path across the ground since I was a bit rusty and more concerned about flying the plane. Joe told me that was a smart plan, but it's still something else I will have to work on in the future. At first I was not doing the greatest job of looking out the sides to maintain a five degree pitch (looking at the bottom of the wingtip on the horizon) and was using too much aileron to correct when the airplane moved around in the air. Joe told me to just use the rudder and not even touch the stick and I started to do a much better job of climbing out straight and smooth. Up at altitude I did some of the basic maneuvers - climbs, descents, and turns - that we worked on during the first lesson. Ever so slightly more comfortable, I began to pick up on a few more clues like the fact that at a proper five degree climb my airspeed was between 55 and 60 miles per hour.

Turns around a point were the next task, and the idea with this maneuver is to make a circle of a constant radius around some point on the ground. Sounds simple enough until you remember that the wind is blowing and always pushing you off course to varying degrees. We picked a water tower and to be honest I ended up making something that only vaguely resembled a parallelogram around a point. But after some more tips from Joe, I started to try to picture the circle on the ground and then worked to keep the plane over top of that imaginary circle. This seemed to help and I improved somewhat as we went on. For some reason, I was holding my altitude within about 25 feet when turning to the left but it was more like 100 feet off when going to the right. Altogether, it's a great maneuver and one I will need to become proficient at but it was an interesting first practice.

Dutch Rolls are where you bank the airplane with the ailerons then use the rudder to keep the nose pointed straight while you rock back and forth.

Slow Flight is pretty self-explanatory but it is important to learn how to control the airplane at these speeds because they are very similar to landing, and less speed often reduces your margin for error close to the ground.

Steep Turns are made by banking the wings between 45 and 60 degrees and the G-force ranges from about 1.33 to 2.0 Gs.

Power Off Stalls are when the throttle is brought to idle (and carburetor heat turned on!) and the stick is pulled back until it stops and the wing stops developing lift - which is essentially what you want to do when landing. I must say that when Joe demonstrated them I was very surprised just how tame they were. It barely felt like anything and we didn't seem to lose more than a couple feet of altitude.

Slips are banking the plane with ailerons one way while using opposite rudder in order to produce a lot of drag and quickly lose altitude. With two maximum slips (rudder pushed as far as it will go) we quickly were down to 1,500 feet and had to climb back up to 3,000.

Joe said it was time for me to practice stalls, so I added carb heat and brought the throttle to idle, let the airspeed slow to less then 40 mph, and slowly brought the stick back as far as it would go. The plane started to buffet and nose over and I let the stick move back forward too soon. This took a few repetitions but I began to get a better feel for it and by the fifth or sixth stall was able to just slightly let the stick move forward and the plane came out of the stall. There's still plenty of practice to go but I definitely felt like I got a much better feeling for how to recover from a stall.

We were starting to feel some turbulence that we figured out to be downdrafts from the thunderstorms that were very far away but slowly making their way closer, so it was time to land. I descended to 1,800 feet and turned downwind (a little too soon, so I had to turn away from the airport a little bit) and then checked that carb heat was on and slowed to 1,500 RPM. As we were descending, I turned base and then final and was still a little bit too high so I had to push the nose over to bleed altitude but managed to stay pretty well aligned with the runway. Joe took over when we were about 25-50 feet in the air and brought us back down to the ground. Discussing later, I found out that I was high because we hit an updraft on short final.

Off of the runway, I taxied back to the hangar and was starting to get a much better feel for controlling the throttle in small amounts to keep the speed from getting too fast. It's still amazing just how much you have to press on the rudder pedals to move that tailwheel on the ground, but it did feel a lot better than when we taxied out before takeoff. All shut down and with the plane back in the hangar, we talked and Joe said he could see my flying improve from the beginning of the lesson to the end. I do believe that I got worse at keeping my head outside the cockpit and looking to the sides for a while in the middle of the lesson until I caught myself and corrected - I definitely have to keep working on that. All told, it was encouraging considering I had not been up in three weeks and it was on my my second lesson. Plenty of new experiences, plenty to work on and think about, and plenty to look forward to.